Thinning the flock

A couple of weeks ago we talked about culling our flock because some of our ladies (and gents) have been eating our eggs. Well, the time had come and we decided we would take all the gear out and cull some of the chickens. We knew we were going to cull Nugget and Sunshine (two of our roosters) but the ladies would be a little more difficult to select. Which ones were the egg eaters? Thankfully, it was actually quite evident. They had dried egg caked into the feathers on their heads. Of course, we most likely missed a few based on this principle but it was a start. So we followed the steps that we typed up in order to process and package our “stew birds” for later down the road.

One of the things we didn’t think about when processing some of the older ladies, was how their anatomy was slightly different compared to the broilers we processed earlier in the spring. These ladies had fully developed reproductive organs which meant they had a little surprise inside of them (an egg)! It definitely caught us off guard, but we looked at it as a final gift from the ladies along with their meat. Hopefully, the remaining ladies will learn a lesson and choose not to eat any eggs.